Surface Modification of Li3VO4 with PEDOT:PSS Conductive Polymer as an Anode Material for Li-Ion Capacitors.

Li3VO4 (LVO) is a highly promising anode material for lithium-ion batteries, owing to its high capacity and stable discharge plateau. However, LVO faces a significant challenge due to its poor rate capability, which is mainly attributed to its low electronic conductivity. To enhance the kinetics of lithium ion insertion and extraction in LVO anode materials, a conductive polymer called poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) is applied to coat the surface of LVO. This uniform coating of PEDOT:PSS improves the electronic conductivity of LVO, thereby enhancing the corresponding electrochemical properties of the resulting PEDOT:PSS-decorated LVO (P-LVO) half-cell. The charge/discharge curves between 0.2 and 3.0 V (vs. Li+/Li) indicate that the P-LVO electrode displays a capacity of 191.9 mAh/g at 8 C, while the LVO only delivers a capacity of 111.3 mAh/g at the same current density. To evaluate the practical application of P-LVO, lithium-ion capacitors (LICs) are constructed with P-LVO composite as the negative electrode and active carbon (AC) as the positive electrode. The P-LVO//AC LIC demonstrates an energy density of 107.0 Wh/kg at a power density of 125 W/kg, along with superior cycling stability and 97.4% retention after 2000 cycles. These results highlight the great potential of P-LVO for energy storage applications.

Lactic acid production directly from starch in a starch-controlled fed-batch operation using Lactobacillus amylophilus.

Based on the batch results, we constructed a simplified simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) model for the simulation of lactic acid production directly from unhydrolyzed potato starch using Lactobacillus amylophilus. The results of batch operation at different initial starch concentrations (20, 40 and 60 g/l) indicated that a higher initial starch concentration would lead to a slightly lower productivity, but would largely decrease the yield. Among that, the batch with 20 g/l of initial starch had the maximum productivity and the maximum yield, which would be 0.31 g/(l h) and 98% (g/g), respectively. In view of increasing the productivity and the final lactic acid concentration, a starch-controlled fed-batch operation with 20 g/l of initial starch was performed. It showed the fed-batch operation with starch controlled at 8 ± 1 g/l by adjusting the starch-feeding rate led to the maximum productivity of 0.75 g/(l h) and the yield of 69%.

Cultivation of Rhodobacter sphaeroides in the stirred bioreactor with different feeding strategies for CoQ(10) production.

The logistic growth model combined with the Luedeking-Piret equation was adopted in this study to model the batch production of CoQ(10) in the cultivation of Rhodobacter sphaeroides. The simulation results indicated that CoQ(10) production was a primary metabolite. As being a primary metabolite, a longer cell growing stage would tend to accumulate more biomass and lead to a higher CoQ(10) concentration being produced. In this context, a fed-batch operation by molasses feeding was performed to increase the biomass and subsequent CoQ(10) production. Three different molasses feeding strategies were operated in this study. Results suggested that the fed-batch operation with molasses controlled at 10 + or - 1 g/l could increase the cell mass and CoQ(10) concentration to reach their maximum values of 18.6 g/l and 83.8 mg/l, respectively, nearly 2.2 times and 1.9 times their respective values obtained in the batch cultivation.